A drop-in replacement for Class::Data::Inheritable, but subclasses can be reloaded without losing their class data. This is useful in mod_perl development, and may be useful elsewhere.

In mod_perl, Apache::Reload conveniently reloads modules that have been modified, rather than having to restart Apache. This works well unless the module stores class data that are not re-created during the reload. In this situation, you still need to restart the server, in order to rebuild the class data.

Saves many (if your code starts out buggy like mine) Apache restarts.

But only if you're strict about storing all class data using this mechanism.

If you want to switch over to this module in a large app, instead of changing all references to Class::Data::Inheritable, you can instead create an empty subclass Class::Data::Inheritable and put it somewhere in your Perl search path that gets searched before the path with the real Class::Data::Inheritable, e.g.

Note that during a reload, this method may be called again for an existing attribute. If so, any value passed with the method is silently ignored, in favour of whatever value was in the slot before the reload.

If the class has been reloaded, and if before the reload, other classes have called mk_classdata on this class, then some accessors will be missing after the reload. AUTOLOAD replaces these methods the first time they are called.

Redispatches (via NEXT) to any AUTOLOAD method further up the chain if no attribute is found.

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-class-data-separated@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.